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Planetary News: Mars (2008)

Mars Science Laboratory Launch Delayed Two Years, Until Late 2011

By Emily Lakdawalla
December 4, 2008
Mars Science Laboratory
Click to enlarge >
Mars Science Laboratory
Credit: NASA / JPL

NASA announced today that their next flagship mission, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, will not be ready to launch in the October 2009 launch window.  Because Mars launch opportunities only occur once every 26 months, any delay beyond October 2009 means that the mission must wait until late in 2011 for its next chance to launch to Mars.

The delay will add a further $300 to 400 million to the price tag for the mission, which now stands at $2.2 to 2.3 billion.  That represents an approximately 40% cost increase over the$1.63 billion figure given at MSL's August 2006 confirmation review.  No future missions will be canceled to pay for the overrun, but "there will have to be some schedule delays" to other planetary missions, according to Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.

A variety of issues caused the schedule problems with MSL, but the main culprit cited at today's press briefing was the actuators, which are the motors and gearboxes that will drive every movement of the rover.  "Actuators drive the wheels, they stop the wheels, they drive the joints in the robotic arm, the drills and the sample handling devices, there's multiple sizes.  They're absolutely crucial to the success of this mission," stated NASA's Mars Exploration Program Director Doug McCuistion.  The rover will have 31 of these actuators, but a total of 105 (which includes flight spares and engineering models) is being built for the mission by a single company, Aeroflex, which is based in New York.  Not a single flight actuator has yet been delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for assembly into the rover.

NASA officials stated that the delay would be put to good use.  No expansion of the rover's scientific payload of ten science instruments will be considered, but the additional two years will be used to perform "extensive testing" of the rover and all its systems and instruments, said Charles Elachi, the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  The additional time will also allow the mission to consider more carefully the lessons learned by the Phoenix lander, which occasionally experienced difficulty in obtaining samples of the Martian soil due to its unexpected "clumpiness."

Upon hearing news of the delay, Jim Bell, the President of The Planetary Society and a Cornell University professor and planetary scientist, stated that "The decision to delay the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory to 2011 is a tough call for NASA and JPL, but it seems to be the right call given the unanticipated technical difficulties that mission designers and engineers have encountered in trying to meet the original 2009 launch schedule.  Despite the disappointment of a delay, The Planetary Society agrees that it is better to solve any problems and thoroughly test MSL before launching the mission.  Ultimately, what's most important is that MSL, one of the most exciting science exploration adventures of the upcoming decade, succeeds."

During today's press briefing, Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, made the unexpected announcement of an agreement in principle between himself and his counterpart at the European Space Agency, David Southwood, that "in the future, NASA and ESA are going to work together to come up with a European-U.S. Mars architecture.  That is, missions won't be NASA missions, they won't be ESA missions, they will be joint missions."

The future of Mars exploration will take longer to arrive than had been planned, but the promise of joint missions between NASA and ESA bodes well for the capability of future spacecraft.  Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, said today, "Mars exploration has always had its ups and downs, but if history has taught us one thing it is that every setback has been ultimately followed by astounding new accomplishments.  MSL will be worth waiting for."

MSL is now planned to launch between October and December of 2011, arriving at Mars in 2012. The year 2009 will be the first Mars launch opportunity that NASA has missed since the launch of Mars Global Surveyor in 1997.

For more information on the delay of the Mars Science Laboratory mission and the announcement of cooperation between NASA and ESA on future Mars exploration, visit The Planetary Society Blog.

MSL under construction
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MSL under construction
As of November 17, 2008, the partially-built MSL rover had been stacked with its descent stage, then encased inside its aeroshell (white conical shape), and stacked with its cruise stage (above the aeroshell), in preparation for thermal vacuum testing. The gray skin stretched over the bottom of the aeroshell simulates the heat shield, which had not yet been delivered. An engineer in the middle ground at right provides scale. The open hatch in the aeroshell provides access to the rover for workers to install the nuclear power supply, which will not be installed until just days before launch, because of the radioactive hazard it represents to human workers and because of the amount of heat it throws off, which will have to be dealt with aggressively by the MSL's cruise stage using active cooling systems. The red-and-black-capped round object on the cruise stage that is facing the camera is a navigational device (a sun sensor or star scanner) that will be used to help steer the stacked spacecraft to Mars. MSL will be stacked and destacked numerous times as it is tested in preparation for its 2011 launch. Credit: Emily Lakdawalla